Biography

Eric Stotik grew up between Papua, New Guinea and Melbourne, Australia. As an adult, he came to Portland to study art at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, where he graduated in 1985. He won the prestigious Betty Bowen Memorial Award in 1994 and was Artist in Residence at the Vivian and Gordon Gilkey Center for the Graphic Arts, Portland Art Museum in 1997. He was named the Regional Arts & Culture Council’s 2011 Fellow in Visual Arts. He has shown his work extensively throughout the Northwest, and his work is included in the collections of the Hallie Ford Museum at Willamette University, Salem; the Portland Art Museum; the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah; Idaho State University; the New York Public Library; and Yale University.

News

Eric Stotik: Fugue opens at the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery

Press

ArtsWatch Weekly: Nero’s fiddle, Louis BunceOregon ArtsWatch

And the invaluable Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem has opened Louis Bunce: Dialogue with Modernism, a retrospective on the late Oregon artist, who Paul Sutinen, in his ArtsWatch review of the show, identifies as a key figure in the city’s cultural life, the catalyst for making Portland a city of modern art. “It is an important show,” Sutinen declares. “It is a great show. It is accompanied by a monograph on Bunce by Roger Hull. It is important. It is great.” And then he explains why. See the sort of thing that the Savonarolas of the federal purse are eager to upend.

The Russo Lee Gallery is featuring more drawings and paintings by Bunce (1907-83) spanning several decades, plus new work by the meticulous, imaginative, and always fascinating Eric Stotik.

Stepping into the Hoffman Gallery from the scenic campus of Lewis & Clark College, we see sets of small paintings hanging around the spacious room of the front gallery. The intimate scale of Eric Stotik’s paintings in this gallery compel us to look closely, as if observing a medieval scroll or the delicate lines of Indian miniature paintings. Stotik’s images however bear scenes of horror, suffering, and often pain. They are surreal, perhaps familiar from our darker dreams or more horrid realities. And the small scale demands a closer look, drawing us into the distressing images more intensely.

Portland, Oregon artist and musician Eric Stotik has been exhibiting his strikingly imaginative and technically accomplished paintings for more than three decades. In 2011, he was awarded the Regional Arts & Culture Council Fellowship Award in Visual Arts, which enabled him to create a 45-foot-long circular painting that was featured at a solo show at Portland’s Laura Russo Gallery in September 2013.

“Eric Stotik is one of our community’s most extraordinary artists,” said Eloise Damrosch, executive director of RACC. “His unique paintings are compelling because they are intelligent and mysterious. We are delighted to extend Eric this recognition and we thank him for his contributions to the visual arts in Portland."